# How SeatGeek Leveraged Scale and Visibility to Capture Group Travel Savings Across 800 Employees

_Entertainment · Mar 5, 2026 · 5 min read_

When you host an all-company NYC offsite each year, dozens of team gatherings in places like New Orleans, Salt Lake City, and Manchester, UK, and partner events at major moments like the Super Bowl and the US Open, travel is more than a line item — it's part of company culture. That's what travel means to SeatGeek, where gatherings bring together an 800-person remote team from all around the world.

## At a glance

- 2,500+ room nights booked per year
- 30% reduction in hotel costs
- 95% booking accuracy

As SeatGeek grew, it was outgrowing its travel workflow. Getting group rates for their biggest gatherings took dedicated staff and hours of manual work. Smaller team trips were coordinated ad-hoc by employees who weren't planning experts. And when plans changed late in the process, last-minute bookings drove up costs. SeatGeek's finance team routinely saw missed opportunities and unnecessary charges — but only after expenses were submitted and decisions were already locked in.

## Making group rates more accessible

SeatGeek was partnering with a travel booker that worked well for individual travel. But large group travel — offsites, summits, partner events — required a separate, time-intensive process of manual RFPs, negotiations, and contract review. When teams booked trips independently, there was no consistent policy to guide them.

> "Coordinating team travel was eating time and leaving money on the table. We needed a way to maximize group rates and roll that out across the company." — Teddy Collins, EVP of Finance, SeatGeek

SeatGeek partnered with Workgrounds to make group travel simple and self-serve — something that doesn't require specialized knowledge or create new dependencies. Using Workgrounds' AI-powered platform, teams across the organization now source hotel room blocks through a guided workflow that automatically leverages the company's scale and buying power. As a result, SeatGeek has captured group rates across more than 2,500 room nights, captured over 30% savings on room rates, and turned what was once a high-effort win into a consistent, repeatable outcome.

## Cutting the busywork out of group travel

Manual group bookings meant SeatGeek's team travel plans started from scratch every time: sending RFPs, chasing hotel responses, looping in legal for contract review, and coordinating confirmations, changes, and payments across teams.

Workgrounds stripped this friction out. Hotel sourcing and bid comparisons now happen automatically, and payments are consolidated onto one card per room block, reducing folio accumulation and making T&E review and reconciliation significantly easier. Confirmations, rooming lists, and changes are managed in one system, so planners can handle inevitable last-minute updates without email chains or guesswork.

> "By simplifying both the front end of booking and the back end of reconciliation, we cut the hours spent organizing group travel dramatically. What used to take weeks of coordination now largely runs itself." — Teddy Collins, EVP of Finance, SeatGeek

## Building visibility and control into bookings

With managers, EAs, and employee experience teams planning group travel across the company, SeatGeek needed a process that didn't depend on travel or procurement expertise. That reality burdened employees and introduced real financial risk. Without early visibility into who was traveling or how many rooms were being committed, finance often didn't see the cost of a trip until bookings were already locked in.

> "Visibility is what turns group travel into a predictable category for finance teams. One of the benefits of Workgrounds is that it gives these teams early insights and oversight throughout, so they can manage travel budgets without taking away the speed and autonomy of self-serve booking." — Nikhil Sethi, Co-founder and CEO, Workgrounds

Workgrounds also brings visibility to the start of the planning process. Pre-planning tools like retail rate comparison, alternative date selector, flight estimator, and HRIS integrations make capacity prediction and projected spend clear before blocks are finalized. As a result, SeatGeek now fills room blocks at over 95% capacity, dramatically reducing exposure to attrition and minimizing wasted spend.

## The result

Group travel is now predictable, manageable, and cost-efficient at SeatGeek. Finance can forecast spend and control exposure, planners keep the flexibility to book independently, and the company consistently captures the maximum value of every large gathering.